“I did not have three thousand pairs of shoes, I had one thousand and sixty.”

by Sally Steele

Crocodile Platforms, lesliekuban.com

Which shoe profile fits you?

Nikita Khrushchev shoe. Former Soviet Union president who boldly and daringly took off his shoe and pounded it on his delegate desk protesting a 1960, during a United Nations General Assembly. This shoe banging came as a result of the Philippines delegate’s speech pointing the finger at The Soviet Union for swallowing Eastern Europe, and expunging political rights.

Nicolae Ceausescu shoe. Former president of Romania and prominent dictator and authoritarian who ruled the country with an iron hand and suppressed his people. Ceausescu was executed by a firing squad in front of cameras. He had a shoe obsession and wore his for one day only, by day’s end ordering his butler to burn them so they could never be reused.

Hunain Shoe. This is a historically legendary tome in eastern culture. A man found a shoe, but did not pick it up. He continued along his way to find a pair of shoes, and not finding another option experienced deep regret and total lack of wearable footwear. The moral of this story: Always aim to achieve something even if it seems excessively difficult at the outset. The story became a proverb applicable to life: if someone fails in anything, it is said…he came back with a Hunain shoe.

Excerpts from my favorite shoe story,“Women From the Ankle Down: The Story of Shoes and How They Define Us,” by Rachelle Bergstein…

“…In Europe in the 14th through 17th centuries, the trend went in the other direction. In Italy, prominent women wore 20-inch-tall chopines, while in France and England, the fad was for long pointy-toed shoes called poulaines.

Elizabethian Sumptuary laws decreed that peasants’ shoe tips could stick out only a half-foot beyond their toes, whereas wealthy bourgeois were permitted 12 inches of ostentation, “one and a half feet for knights, two feet for nobles, and two and a half feet for princes, who had to hold the tips of their shoes up with gold or silver chains attached to their knees.

Once, shoes were a rarity in the ordinary person’s closet. Men and women owned a pair or two at the most, and relied on cobblers to make them. And back when women’s skirts swept the ground, a pricey shoe was wasted effort.”

Imelda Marcos villa, shoe salon

Sometimes, shoes were less than rare, case in point, Imelda Marcos, former Philippine first lady. One corridor in her villa was lined floor to ceiling with her shoe collection, neatly arranged on shelves and wrapped in plastic. Imelda insisted she was expected to change her shoes seven times a day. She couldn’t possibly receive one “VIP” wearing the same outfit in which she’d met another. “It was a sign of respect,” said Imelda.

The sad, sad story updated, “More than 150 cartons of clothes, dress accessories and shoes of the Marcoses were transferred to the National Museum for safekeeping two years ago after termites, humidity and mold threatened the apparel at the riverside palace. They deteriorated further at the museum after the fragile boxes were abandoned in a padlocked hall that had no facilities to protect such relics and was inundated by tropical rains last month due to a gushing leak in the ceiling, museum officials said.

Museum staffers, who were not aware the boxes contained precious mementos from the Marcoses, opened the hall on the fourth floor of the building after noticing water pouring out from under the door. They were shocked to see Marcos’ shoes and gowns when they opened the wet boxes, officials said.”

Imelda Marcos in her museum, with some of those 1,060 pairs of shoes, guardian.co.uk; manilagateway.com/attractions/shoe-museum

Imelda Marcos damaged shoes, Bullit Marquez, AP

More from Bergstein, “…as the age of mass production made more shoe styles available cheaply to more people and as the rise of the flapper brought shorter hemlines, the craze for conspicuous shoe consumption clicked.

At the same time, the very fact that something hard to get had become plentiful produced a desire for scarcity — in the form of handmade, expensive shoes (out of the reach of most budgets in the pre-credit era) made by craftsmen who regarded the trade as an art.”

Joan Crawford & Salvatore Ferragamo, museoferragamo.it

“Enter Salvatore Ferragamo, a boy from an Italian village who cobbled together his first creations as a precocious 9-year-old in 1907, and at 16 moved to California, where he began making shoes for Hollywood stars.

When fans saw his inventions in luscious close-up, they raced (as fast as they could in kitten heels) to snatch them up.

…Fast-forward to the present, and you can see how this obsessive heritage lurches on among the women who line up outside Manolo Blahnik’s boutique before dawn on sample-sale days, who squander their rent money on Jimmy Choo, and who, this moment, can be seen slipping on the escalators at an H & M near you, in their towering wedge-heeled Kork-Ease knockoffs.”

Christian Louboutin Spikes, dcfootwear.us

So here’s what the shoe skirmishes gracing all the major newspapers are all about…

Salvatore Ferragamo green crocodile kitten heels, retail price $4,500

The New York Times recently reported: “The great designer shoe wars of Manhattan retailing have escalated at an astonishing pace since 2007, back when Saks Fifth Avenue, in a clever marketing gambit, announced that its expanded footwear department was so large that it deserved its own vanity ZIP code, 10022-SHOE. Rivals have responded with incremental upgrades and exclusives to their shoe departments, setting the stage for a Battle of the Blahniks that could carry on well into the next decade. In 2018, Nordstrom, well known for the breadth of its footwear offerings, is set to open an attack on the Western Front, or at least on West 57th Street.

Down in Herald Square, meanwhile, Macy’s is fortifying its flagship during a $400 million overhaul with a shoe department that will reportedly hold more than 300,000 pairs…”

Barneys NY, Shoe Floor, theiconconcierge.com

The NYT continues “…But the latest salvo came this week from Barneys New York, which opened a shoe department that sprawls across an adjoining floor of its men’s and women’s store on Madison Avenue. A civilian might have thought that the new look was designed to equate shoe shopping with entering heaven, as the elevators open onto a gleamingly bright and white space, covering 22,000 square feet on the fifth floor. (It was created with the interior design firm Yabu Pushelberg.)” A classic 2009 article from the venerable NYT by Cintra Wilson is a fabulous favorite of mine, Choose a Shoe, Any Shoe, and Hold On. “…But the shoe department of Barneys New York is devoted, to an intoxicating degree, to party shoes: feathery, mile-high spangle-y things made of sex and Christmas trees, that transform the wearer into someone with legs and buttocks rivaling those of Rachel Alexandra at the Preakness.”

Rachel Alexandra & her shoes, Smith for News, nydailynews.com.jpg

The classics reign, current iterations pale next to the icons of shoedom.

I’m no shoe salesman or even a shoe shopper, and I have less pairs of shoes in my closet than many men have in their closets. I think I would bypass the options above, I’ve never been an it’s ok for my shoes to hurt girl…you’ll find me cozied up in front of the fire in the green crocodile chair, wearing some oh-so-comfortable crocodile classic tennies.

Robert Frank set the bar for street photography in the 1950's. His seminal book, The Americans, stands as a touchstone for all documentary photographers, recently republished by Steidl, free show touring to 50 universities.

This vehicle apeared in the film “Dick Smart, Agent 2007” starring Richard Wyler, Margaret Lee, Rosanna Tapados. For this movie, the Vespa 180 Super Sport was transformed by Piaggio and by the English factory Alpha Willis to race along the road, fly like a helicopter, sail and dive like a submarine.

Janis Joplin’s Psychedelic Porsche 356 Sells for $1.76 Million at RM Sotheby’s New York

8,000 yrs. old, the largest Neolithic structure settlement, is giant square of 101 raised mounds, larger than the Cheops Pyramids, seen from space

Italian fashion house Fendi has moved into its new headquarters at Rome's Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana – a building commissioned by dictator Benito Mussolini in 1943 that has been renovated by local architect Marco Costanzi

Friends and contemporaries: From left, John Irving; Gay Talese; Saul and Gayfryd Steinberg, the hosts of this cocktail party for the PEN writers’ group in 1985; Kurt Vonnegut; William Styron; and Norman Mailer. Credit photograph by Jill Krementz, all rights reserved

Francis Fleetwood in 1991, near a home in East Hampton, N.Y., one of over 200 he built in the area starting in 1980, including homes for Alec Baldwin, Lauren Bacall, and Calvin Klein, photograph by Michael Shavel

Picasso's Women of Algiers has become the most expensive painting to sell at auction, going for $160m (£102.6m) at Christie's in New York

Must See: new Salgado film, The Salt of the Earth, it's visionary, heartbreaking and uplifting, photograph by Sebastiao Salgado/Amazonas Images

Frei Otto wins prestigious Pritzker Architectural award for 2015. Blind, who just died before his award at 89, the German is renowned for his diaphanous roof canopies and other "inventive feats of engineering"

The photograph taken by William Eggleston for WSJ Magazine of some of his Leica and Canon cameras, blogs.wsj.com

From the book “Cotton Tenants: Three Families" by James Agee ~ photograph by Walker Evans

In front of ~ Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice Biennale 2013, June 1 through November

Memorial Day 2013, Presidio, San Francisco, photograph by Kim Steele

Flapper Girl: What was missing from Great Gatsby, runway.blogs.nytimes.com

Glass Jellyfish, by German glass artist Leopold Blaschka, 1822 - 1895

In Honor Of Ottavio Missoni, 1921 - 2013, and his kaleidoscope of colours, textile-blog.com

Iron Lady: Who knew Iron Man had a wife? nytimes.com

Painters hang from suspended wires on the Brooklyn Bridge October 7, 1914 -- 31 years after it first opened; @AP Photo/New York City Municipal Archives, Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures, Eugene de Salignac

Danae (pronounced De-NIGH-EE) and the Shower of Gold (1939), photograph by George Platt Lynes

MUSINGS FROM OUR PUBLISHER… KIM STEELE:

Degas, Impressionism, and the Paris Millinery Trade

A recent Flaneur sighting in San Francisco! This fetching show featured 40 Impressionist paintings and pastels, including key works by Degas—many never before exhibited in the United States—as well as those by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Édouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and 40 exquisite examples of period hats.

Best known for his depictions of Parisian dancers and laundresses, Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917) was enthralled with another aspect of life in the French capital—high-fashion hats and the women who created them. The artist, invariably well-dressed and behatted himself, “dared to go into ecstasies in front of the milliners’ shops,” Paul Gauguin wrote of his lifelong friend.

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Faire du Lèche-Vitrines

We have celebrated The Boulevardiers raison de’tre for five years now, founded on the French pre-occupation of strolling and window gazing in Paris, and London, and Rome. This Publisher was struck by a newly found term, "Faire du Lèche-Vitrines," which is crudely translated as “window licking.” Now knowing the decorum of the French, I am convinced that they would not apply this term to their promenading in the trendy section, the Marais, of Paris, which is the center of all that is cool, hip and expensive. The original center of Paris, built in the 13th century by the Knights Templar, much has remained, avoiding destruction by City decree in 1964. The Boulevardiers strolled through this section last summer on the way to L’Orangrie and gazed covetously at the many shops, bakeries and patisseries... and could very well appreciate this phrase.

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The Flâneuse

Guest Musing from The Boulevardiers "Muse" Sally Steele:

Never let it be said that the Boulevardiers don't celebrate all who wander in search of inspiration, or in daily observation. A recently published book, The Flâneuse, is a lively tome focusing on the French flâneuse, the feminine of flâneur: defined as a woman who is or who behaves like a flaneur; who is defined as an idle man-about-town.

Author Lauren Elkin: "The portraits I paint here attest that the flâneuse is not merely a female flâneur, but a figure to be reckoned with, and inspired by, all on her own…She is a determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk."

For some time, I have been lamenting whilst walking my town, enviously observing the abundance of hipster bistros and coffee bars populated all day and into the evening by those lucky enough to grab the time to simply sit and watch the world go by. But how oh so boring that would be!

Recently perusing the tales of Diego, the sire of Galapagos tortoises, I smiled having "met" Diego in the Galapagos several years ago. And when reading about the rich arts scene in Milan, funded mostly via the largesse of the fashion houses, my head was full of images of days spent wandering there, not so long ago. As I poured over my travel photos I saw Los Angeles, Lima, and Santiago; New York, Maui and Athens; Venice, Istanbul, and Marseilles; Cannes, Sydney, and Tokyo, and so many more. I walked for miles in for London, from my favorite museum, The V&A, to Harrod's, to the trendy parts of town with all the big name galleries. Ditto for New York. And Rome, major renovations to ancient and Renaissance sites currently underway, again due to the largesse of the world's fashion leaders. And oh, Paris, strolling in the Tuileries in the drizzle after a glorious morning spent at l'Orangerie. Then there were some standout strolls on La Croisette amidst the excitement of the awards season. I live a fanciful life!

I'm lucky enough to be partner to the ultimate flâneur, who has so graciously guided me into becoming a full-fledged flâneuse.

Here's to women everywhere, and to living a life that takes the good walk, and turns it into the truly great walk.

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Closure of the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York

More reflective of how important this closing was than the claim that, ‘the owners let it go,’ were the results of the auction this week of items from the restaurant. The items went off the hook pricewise. The sign alone, estimated at $5-7,000 sold for $96,000! The ashtrays went for $10,000! (A fifteen-hour marathon auction!) This enthusiasm for artifacts, not only harkens back to the MAD MEN ERA, but also revered to very recently, indicates the longing for a place where the elite and the common folk, albeit New Yorker’s of means, can mingle and gawk at one another in a gorgeous setting. I had my last martini there, last fall.

This Publisher had the fortunate experience to eat there a few times, both with Time Inc. Editors, and with my parents. My Dad exclaimed…"$6.00 for carrots!" once in the POOL ROOM. I did not give it a second thought. I always coveted the chain ball curtains that lined the Grill Room windows to the outside. I intended for years to install them in my home, and even tried to source them at one point unsuccessfully. But the spirit of the restaurant was unique. There was the mention in the Metropolitan Section of the New York Times, of a conversation overheard by the Maître D' on the phone when asked to forward a message to a patron at the bar who was Indian. He inquired, Dot or Feather?

Everything about the place bespoke of power and success. The NY times recently published the seating chart of the patrons. A veritable who’s who of the publishing and financial world of the US. It did shift occasionally over the years since its opening in 1959, from various power brokers and intuitions. A number of the items were reserved for the Metropolitan Museum’s collection. This included the mid-night blue sofas designed by Philip Johnson. Martha Stewart was in attendance. She blurted out that she wished the nickel wine coasters, designed by the infamous architectural critic, Louie Huxtable, to be used at her ‘next’ wedding. A notable Saarinen Tulip table went for $36,000!

There has always been this murky history to the restaurant’s design. The renowned Mies van der Rohe designed the Seagram’s Building for the liquor magnate family, Bronfman. At that time, Philip Johnson was his assistant. Johnson claimed later to be a partner in design which has been disputed, but he was definitely involved in the design of the Four Seasons, which came a few years later.

Mr. Niccolini, the restaurant owner, who used salty language to refer to the building owner, ended the auction carrying a platter of pink cotton candy, a signature desert for the eatery, across the Pool Room upon which various patrons pulled off sections. A patron who flew up from Charleston to pick up ‘whatever’ she could proclaimed, “A place like this won’t happen again!"

Source: The New York Times

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On Architecture

Italian Fascism finally dies…with the recent death of supporter Licio Gelli. I must say I have a weakness for Fascist architecture. Visiting the Valle de los Caídos ("Valley of the Fallen"), a Catholic basilica and a monumental memorial to the dictator Francisco Franco of Spain shot chills of fear and admiration through my veins. Talk about “reductivism” at its purist, even the most libertarian minded person gasps at this monument. The scoundrel was convicted numerous times for bank fraud and embezzlement but never did hard time, due to his “health” but managed lived till 96 years of age. He personified the glorious phrase only Italians could invent, “dietrologia” which means that the widely held suspicion that behind official government narrative lurks a more sinister explanation.

His political and financial shenanigans set the bar for the unbridled greed that we see on Wall Street today.

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Flanerie Season

The raking light of fall brings out the Flaneur in me, the season of Flanerie. Elaine Sciolino reminds us of the first establishment of this pastime in literature, “Tableau de Paris,” a twelve volume set of observations the gestalt the of ‘street’ in Paris. Half a century later, this sites’ figurehead, Charles Baudelaire, demarked the ‘wander-spectator’ activity as flaneur. “The crowd is his habitat, as is air for the bird or water for the fish” he quoted.

This activity is so important to the French, that Hermes created a pop-up museum on the left bank to honor its significance. The artistic director of the project, Pierre-Alexis Dumas also created an illustrated book on the subject. It’s a small single room structure with four window displays, including from the collection of a past president, Emile Hermes.

To observe yes, to interact no. The sounds, the smells and the visual jewels glistening in the shop windows- draws us to the streets of Paris, or London or our favorite ville, Roma. And of course, the most animated of them all – the people who stroll and sit and observe in the cafes, not the harried New Yorkers who are irritated by strollers in their path. Years ago, I proposed a story for Life Magazine, on the important promenades of the world, but to no avail. Sadly, it is not an American occupation.

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Frank Zachary, Editor and Art Director, A Rich Life

Whether I imagined it as a child or I actually saw the magazine HOLIDAY, I knew it was a gem of graphic design and photography. I knew Slims Aarons was a rock star, even when I was a young photographer. Though I was more interested in ‘real’ journalism, I admired the veneer he lay over celebrities and glamour, locales-who did not want to be there? A few art directors changed the face of magazines - the “golden age of magazines”: Alex Brodovitch, Frank Zachary and Roger Black. They produced a short-lived magazine, Portfolio in 1949, regarded as the “definitive graphic magazine” by The New York Times. Zachary died at age 101 yesterday in East Hampton, NY.

Brodovitch changed the thinking on typography, especially for Harper’s Bazaar, that I subscribed to for years just to see his work (overlaying type); Zachary changed the importance of photography in magazines. The weeklies were in full bloom in the 1960's & 70's, Saturday Evening Post, Life, Look, Town and Country and Esquire were employing photographers and giving them extravagant exposure. Zachary assigned the greats: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and Arnold Newman.

Born to a Croatian immigrant parents (1914), named Frank Zaharija, his father a steel worker in Pittsburgh, Zachary never attended college, he climbed his way up through hard work. He art directed at Holiday (1951-1964) including being managing editor, Town and Country, Modern Photography to which I subscribed as a child, Travel and Leisure.

I think his brilliance is best described by a friend, Owen Edwards, “Like any good anthropologist, he studied this particular tribe, figured out what most interested them and their habits, and found writers [including Faulkner] and photographers who could show their world in the most entertaining way.”

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Robert Capa, Magnum photojournalist, 1913 - 1954

Publisher’s Musings: Dateline Saigon ~ January 26, 2015

As publisher, I have vowed not to include politics. But after visiting the War Remnants Museum here, which brought tears to my eyes, I think my renewal of the power of photography urged me to reflect on this exhibition, which covers the second floor, of heart wrenching imagery. In an era that has eroded the value of images with self-indulging selfies, seeing photos by some of my heroes, Larry Burrows, Robert Capa and Phillip Jones Griffith (whom I met) rocked me to the core. Burrows and Capa died here. Visitors seemed unable to focus on them.

Life Magazine is well represented here with large reproductions. As an Air Force cadet, I was frightened by what I saw. The images contributed to my request for a Conscientious Objector status. It was considered the first ‘live’ coverage of a war. I remember clearly one issue with tiny pictures of the 58,000 men who died. Both the imagery of the devastation of incursions wreaked on the Vietnamese and the impact the war had on the shooters, it was the darkest period of U.S. history. In the name of stopping Communism, our inexcusable use of Agent Orange is illustrated in the museum in unfathomable images. It is the power of this photography that is widely considered to be what initiated President Johnson’s withdrawal from the war. Despite the pain, it was life-affirming to see the power of photography!

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This is Picasso's umpteenth fifteen minutes of fame:
His renovated mansion in Paris, Musée Picasso Paris, has just re-opened after an exorbitant five year renovation, ribbon cut by François Hollande himself, but under the dark shadow of the Cultural minister, Korean-born Fleur Pellerin, who declared she has not ‘read’ a book in years and could not name a book of the recently awarded Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Patrick Modiano, France’s fifteenth in the category.

Back on home turf, there are two private gallery showings of his work that rival any museum exhibitions, in fact many of the pieces were loaned from museums. They almost seem to challenge one another, since they are both top tier galleries, The Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea and Pace Gallery, both in New York. The Gagosian is a photograph-based exhibition, titled "Picasso & the camera" curated by an old friend of his, John Richardson, designed by a Las Vegas show designer David Korens. There are many images of his various mistresses, s well as films. Despite his reputation as a misogynist, the museum’s president, Anne Baldassari, denies this but claims he only had difficulty maintaining relationships. I saw the MoMa exhibition in the 1990's of his with a room dedicated to his various wives and mistresses and the progressive horrification of their faces as he lost interest in them. Quite revealing. The Pace exhibition focuses in a different direction. On his enduring relationship with his last wife Jacqueline Roque, until his death, with tender imagery and a loving hand.

As an artist, I cannot help but to admire his vitality and fecundity. I read a memoir of life in the South of France, especially the summer jaunts to the country with the likes of Francoise Gilot. To top off the adoration, the exhibition at the Met of Lauder’s Cubist collection (Interesting Openings below) features many of his paintings from that period.

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On every trip to NY, I visit one of my favorite urban spaces, The Grand Central Oyster Bar. Between my passion for oysters and my adoration for Guastavino's tile craft, this is my ideal spot. We traveled to 103rd Street this last trip to enjoy a beautifully illustrated and informative exhibition at The Museum of New York, of his sumptuous tilework throughout New York employed by McKim, Mead and White, and NY City (including the recently uncovered bottom to the Queensborough Bridge, now a Farmer's Market).

Guastavino tile is the "Tile Arch System" patented in the United States in 1885 by Valencian (Spanish) architect and builder Rafael Guastavino (1842–1908). Guastavino vaulting is a technique for constructing robust, self-supporting arches and architectural vaults using interlocking terracotta tiles and layers of mortar to form a thin skin, with the tiles following the curve of the roof as opposed to horizontally (corbelling), or perpendicular to the curve (as in Roman vaulting). This is known as timbrel vaulting, because of supposed likeness to the skin of a timbrel or tambourine. It is also called "Catalan vaulting" and "compression-only thin-tile vaulting".

Guastavino tile is found in some of New York’s most prominent Beaux-Arts landmarks and in major buildings across the United States.

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CREATURE FEATURE

The 166-million-year-old extinct squid relative Belemnoteuthis antiquus had a large, internal shell that likely made it slower than its modern-day, shell-less relations.

Credit: Courtesy of Jonathan Jackson and Zoë Hughes/NHMUK

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences:
The ancestors of octopuses and squid once sported hard shells, but when did they lose their "mobile homes" and become agile, soft-bodied swimmers? A new study finds that this change may have occurred during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

Squishy creatures like squid and octopuses rarely leave behind well-preserved fossils. That has left scientists perplexed over when in the creatures' evolutionary history these cephalopods lost their shells. Researchers have now used a mix of fossil and genetic models to solve the puzzle.

The reason? The loss of shells made the ancient relatives of the modern-day octopus, squid and cuttlefish nimbler, a feature that likely helped these animals catch prey and evade predators, Vinther said.

The heavy shells led to the demise of many cephalopod ancestors, because they couldn't "keep up with the 'new [shell-less] kids on the block,'" Vinther told Live Science.

The researchers made the discovery using a molecular clock technique, which helped them determine when different cephalopod branches sprouted on the family tree.

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INTERESTING OPENINGS:

Rodin: 100 Years, at the Cleveland Museum of Art

September 1, 2017 – May 13, 2018

Worldwide commemoration of the centennial of Auguste Rodin’s death continues with the Cleveland Museum of Art showcasing its holdings of the great sculptor’s work. Some of the artworks included in the exhibition were acquired ahead of the museum’s opening in 1913, just five years before the passing of artist. Rodin cast a version of his piece Age of Bronze for the museum, which also owns a monumental version of The Thinker perched at the institution’s main entrance.

The Cleveland Museum of Art marks the centennial of Rodin’s death with a display of works from the museum’s permanent collection. During World War I, while the museum’s original building was still under construction, trustee Ralph King began negotiations to acquire works from Rodin. The first work to enter the collection was a monumental Thinker, acquired by King in 1916 and donated the following year. Rodin also agreed to cast a special version of his great breakthrough sculpture The Age of Bronze for the museum. Other lifetime casts were donated by civic-minded Clevelanders, and one by Rodin himself. The museum eventually acquired more than 40 works spanning the artist’s career in a wide variety of materials, including the magnificent, larger-than-life plaster sculpture Heroic Head of Pierre de Wissant. The monumental Thinker, one of the museum’s signature works, has graced the south entrance since 1917 and was severely damaged by a bomb in March 1970.

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Jean Fouquet: The Melun Diptych, at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

September 15, 2017 – January 7, 2018

Jean Fouquet’s diptych from the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Melun is one of the masterworks of French painting and of fifteenth century art in general. The former left panel, featuring a portrait of the donor Étienne Chevalier and a representation of Saint Stephen, came into the Gemäldegalerie’s collection in 1896. The right panel, depicting the Madonna, has belonged to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp since the early nineteenth century. In addition, there is the enamel medallion with a self-portrait of the artist, which once decorated the frame of the diptych and is now preserved in the Louvre.

Curated by Stephan Kemperdick, the presentation at Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie will bring all of these fragments together for the first time in 80 years, thereby briefly restoring the lost unity of a great work of art. Planned several times in the last decades but never realised, the reunification of the two large, well-preserved paintings is a sensation and offers viewers an exceptional aesthetic experience.

Additional selected works delineate the artistic context of the painter and demonstrate his artistic foundations. First and foremost is the Portrait of the Ferrara Court Jester Gonella from Vienna, whose attribution to Jean Fouquet has been debated for forty years. For the first time ever, it will be shown next to verified major works by Fouquet. In addition, there is the life-size portrait drawing of Guillaume Jouvenel des Ursins, the only preserved sheet that can be attributed to Fouquet without doubt. In addition is a portrait drawing, preserved only as a copy, of Agnès Sorel, the mistress of the French king, whose characteristics one may wish to recognise in the Madonna from the diptych. Additional paintings by Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Rogier van der Weyden, as well as drawings by Benozzo Gozzoli and Barthélemy d’Eyck, represent the seminal Netherlandish portrait painting of Fouquet’s time, as well as his possible Italian inspirations.

A publication will be released for the exhibition, presenting new research on the work and the circumstances of its creation, as well as on the artist himself. Included are essays from eleven international specialists who pursue, among other topics, the donor Étienne Chevalier and his patron-age, Fouquet’s painted architectures, and the artistic sources cited by the painter, as well as the technical characteristics of his paintings and drawings.

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Inside the Dinner Party Studio, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts Library, Washington, DC

September 17, 2017 – January 5, 2018

It took Judy Chicago five years to create The Dinner Party, perhaps the most famous feminist piece in the history of art. That painstaking process is explored at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, showcasing the artist’s research in uncovering the stories of history’s forgotten women, as well as film documentation of the work of Chicago and her hundreds of volunteers. (At the Brooklyn Museum, where the piece is permanently on display, “Roots of The Dinner Party: History in the Making,” which also recounts the work’s genesis.

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Drawn in Colour: Degas from the Burrell, at the National Gallery, London

September 20, 2017 – May 7, 2018

The Burrell Collection holds one of the greatest collections of Degas’s works in the world. Rarely seen in public, this exhibition marks the first time the group of 20 pastels has been shown outside of Scotland, since they were acquired.

One of the greatest artistic innovators of his age, Degas found new ways of depicting modern Parisian life; pursuing a vision distinct from that of his fellow Impressionists. He also relentlessly experimented with materials, particularly pastel that he came to prefer over oil paint.

Coinciding with the centenary of Degas’s death, and including complementary works from the National Gallery Collection, the exhibition offers unique insight into the practices and preoccupations of a complex and intensely private artist. Exhibition organised by the National Gallery in collaboration with the Burrell Collection, Glasgow.

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Jasper Johns: Something Resembling Truth, at the Royal Academy of Art, London

September 23 – December 10, 2017

Widely known for his iconic images of flags, targets, numbers, maps and light bulbs, Jasper Johns has occupied a central position in American art since his first solo exhibition in New York in 1958. His treatment of iconography and appropriation of objects, symbols and words makes the familiar unfamiliar, achieving this through the distinctive, complex textures of his works. Through his ground-breaking paintings and sculptures, Johns established a decisive new direction in an art world that had previously been dominated by Abstract Expressionism.

Jasper Johns: ‘Something Resembling Truth’ is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s work to be held in the UK in 40 years. Comprising over 150 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, it reveals the continuities and changes that have occurred over the past six decades and the curiosity and experimentation that Johns continues to apply to his current practice. During the 1960s Johns added an array of household and studio objects and imprints and casts of the human figure. The works of the 1970s are dominated by an abstract pattern, referred to as “crosshatchings”. During the 1980s and 1990s Johns introduced a variety of images that engaged with the ambiguities of perception and ongoing themes involving memory, sexuality, and the contemplation of mortality. From this time, Johns increasingly incorporated tracings and details of works by artists including Matthias Grünewald, Pablo Picasso and Edvard Munch. By the early 2000s Johns had embarked on the pared-down and more conceptual Catenary series which, along with other recent works such as 5 Postcards, 2013 and Regrets, 2013, shows the rich productivity and vitality of this late phase of his career.

Charles Eames, born 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri, studied architecture at Washington University in St. Louis and opened his own office together with Charles M. Gray in 1930. In 1935 he founded another architectural firm with Robert T. Walsh. After receiving a fellowship in 1938 from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, he moved to Michigan and joined the faculty the following year. In 1940, he and Eero Saarinen won first prize for their joint entry in the competition 'Organic Design in Home Furnishings' organised by the New York Museum of Modern Art. During the same year, Eames became head of the department of industrial design at Cranbrook, and in 1941 he married Ray Kaiser.

Ray Eames was born as Bernice Alexandra Kaiser in Sacramento, California, in 1912. She attended Bennett College in Millbrook, New York, and continued her studies in painting under Hans Hofmann through 1937. During this year she exhibited her work in the first exhibition of the American Abstract Artists group at the Riverside Museum in New York. She matriculated at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1940 and married Charles Eames the following year.

From 1941 to 1943, Charles and Ray Eames designed and developed stretchers and leg splints made of moulded plywood, and in 1946 they exhibited their experimental moulded plywood furniture at the New York Museum of Modern Art. The Herman Miller Company in Zeeland, Michigan, subsequently began to produce the Eameses' furniture designs. Charles and Ray participated in the 1948 'Low-Cost Furniture' competition at MoMA, and they built the Eames House in 1949 as their own private residence. Around 1955 the couple began to focus more on their extensive work as photographers and filmmakers, and in 1964 Charles received an honorary doctoral degree from the Pratt Institute in New York.

The Eames Office designed the IBM Pavilion for the 1964-65 World's Fair in New York, and the year 1969 offered the opportunity to participate in the exhibition 'Qu'est-ce que le design?' at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 1970-71, Charles was appointed as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. MoMA again presented an exhibition of the Eameses' work, entitled 'Furniture by Charles Eames', in 1973. Charles Eames died in St. Louis in 1978; Ray's death followed in 1988.

Charles and Ray Eames have had a profound and lasting influence on Vitra. The company's activity as a furniture manufacturer began in 1957 with the production of their designs. Yet it is not just the products of Charles and Ray Eames that have left their mark on Vitra. Even today, their design philosophy continues to profoundly shape the company's values, orientation and goals.

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Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895–1925, at the Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey

October 7, 2017 – January 7, 2018

Home to the Clarence H. White Archives, the Princeton University Art Museum showcases the work of the groundbreaking photographer, who helped the medium gain recognition as an art form. The traveling exhibition is the first retrospective dedicated to White’s career in over a generation, at once reestablishing his legacy and refocusing the story of early 20th-century American photography.

This exhibition spotlights the work of Clarence White (1871-1925), a founding member of the Photo-Secession, a gifted photographer celebrated for his beautiful scenes of quiet domesticity and outdoor idylls, and an influential teacher and photographic mentor. The first retrospective devoted to the photographer in over a generation, this exhibition and accompanying publication will survey White’s career from his beginnings in 1895 in Ohio to his death in Mexico in 1925 and, importantly, will locate his work within the contexts of the international Arts and Crafts movement, the development of photographic magazine illustration and advertising, and the redefinition of childhood and the domestic sphere.

Drawing on the Clarence H. White Archives at the Princeton University Art Museum, and thus uniquely suited to development by Princeton, as well as loans from other public and private collections, Clarence White and His World will juxtapose White’s skillfully posed portraits and studies of his family and friends with those of his colleagues, such as Paul Haviland, Gertrude Käsebier, and F. Holland Day, and will also be the first exhibition to explore a little known series of nudes and figure studies done with Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. White’s two decades as a teacher will be highlighted by the work of artists who studied with him and by extensive documentation of his schools in Maine, Connecticut, and Manhattan. Completing White’s visual world, the exhibition will also feature a selection of paintings and prints by William Merritt Chase, Thomas Dewing, Max Weber, Edmund Tarbell, John Alexander, and others.

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Sanctuary at the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture

October 7, 2017 – March 11, 2018

Presented by the FOR-SITE Foundation, “Sanctuary” transforms a decommissioned military chapel with four-by-six woolen rugs in the style of traditional Muslim prayer rugs. Bearing designs by 36 artists from 22 countries and handwoven in Lahore, Pakistan, the rugs recall devotional objects, as well as the global trade in Middle Eastern carpets. Visitors will be encouraged to remove their shoes before entering the chapel, acknowledging the exhibition as a sacred space.

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Monet: Framing Life, at the Detroit Institute of Arts

October 22, 2017–March 4, 2018

One of the gems of the DIA collection, Claude Monet‘s Gladioli—recently rechristened Rounded Flower Bed (Corbeille de fleurs) following research by museum curator Jill Shaw—is being reunited with 10 other paintings by artist and fellow Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. All of the works were created in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil between late 1871 and early 1878, during the formative years of the Impressionist movement, and serve to tell the stories of Monet’s career and Impressionism in general.

This mammoth retrospective will feature 300 artworks, including paintings, relief sculptures, and drawings, created over Frank Stella‘s prolific six-decade career—exploring the many dimensions of his oeuvre, from the late 1950s to the present. In addition to some of Stella’s best-known works, museum director and chief curator Bonnie Clearwater has delved deep into the artist’s personal papers, showing sketches, maquettes, and other preparatory materials from his “Working Archive” for the first time.

The exhibition juxtaposes works from various periods of Stella’s career, revealing his aesthetic development and focusing on his “Working Archive,” which contains material never exhibited before, such as notes, sketches and maquettes that shed light on his growth as an artist. Stella’s diverse interests include art history, architecture, new materials (fluorescent pigment, carbon fiber, titanium, et al.) and computer-aided modeling for rapid prototyping. His preparatory studies show the ideas in his work that led to a notion about the enlargement of pictorial space.
Included will be penciled color sequences for the larger concentric square paintings (1973), flat foam-core cut-outs leading to the emergence of a more generous “working space” and 3D printed models from the 1990’s through the present outlining the use of digital technology.

Frank Stella (b. 1936) emerged as part of a generation of American artists excited by, driven and challenged by Abstract Expressionism. Frank Stella: Experiment and Change emphasizes the variety of expression found throughout his entire body of work. The twists and turns of Stella’s career are illuminated by insights that were discovered during the curatorial process. This exhibition elaborates on the research Clearwater began for a previous exhibition, Frank Stella at 2000: Changing the Rules, an in-depth exploration of the artist’s bold paintings, sculpture and architectural models from the 90’s.

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Keith Haring: the End of the Line, at the Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

November 17, 2017 – March 11, 2018

In 1987, Keith Haring created a massive temporary mural at the Cranbrook. Thirty years later, the museum revisits that landmark work, presenting documentation of the project alongside work created following its completion, providing a compelling overview of the last few years of the legendary street a 30.

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Modigliani, at the Tate Modern, London

November 23, 2017 – April 2, 2018

Tate Modern brings together a dazzling range of his iconic portraits, nudes, sculptures in the largest exhibition to be shown in this country. Although he died tragically young, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) was a ground-breaking artist who pushed the boundaries of the art of his time. Including almost 100 works, the exhibition will re-evaluate this familiar figure, looking afresh at the experimentation that shaped his career and made Modigliani one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

Born in Livorno, Italy and working in Paris from 1906, Modigliani’s career was one of continual evolution. The exhibition begins with the artist’s arrival in Paris, exploring the creative environments and elements of popular culture that were central to his life and work. Inspired by the art of Paul Cézanne, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and Pablo Picasso, Modigliani began to experiment and develop his own distinctive visual language, seen in early canvases such as Bust of a Young Woman 1908 (Lille Métropole Musée d’Art Moderne, Villeneuve-d’Ascq) and The Beggar of Leghorn 1909 (Private Collection). His circle included poets, dealers, writers, and musicians, many of whom posed for his portraits including Diego Rivera 1914 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf), Juan Gris 1915 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Jean Cocteau 1916 (The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, Princeton University Art Museum). The exhibition will also reconsider the role of women in Modigliani’s practice, particularly poet and writer Beatrice Hastings. Hastings will be shown not simply as the artist’s muse, but as an important figure in the cultural landscape of the time.

Modigliani features exceptional examples of the artist’s lesser-known work in sculpture, bringing together a substantial group of his Heads made before the First World War. Although the artist’s ill-health and poverty eventually dictated otherwise, he spent a short but intense period focusing on carving, influenced by contemporaries and friends including Constantin Brâncuși and Jacob Epstein. For his wellbeing, Modigliani left Paris in 1918 for an extended period in the South of France. Here he adopted a more Mediterranean colour palette and, instead of his usual metropolitan sitters, he began painting local peasants and children such as Young Woman of the People 1918 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Boy with a Blue Jacket 1919 (Indianapolis Museum of Art).

The exhibition concludes with some of Modigliani’s best-known depictions of his closest circle. Friends and lovers provided him with much-needed financial and emotional support during his turbulent life while also serving as models. These included his dealer and close friend Léopold Zborowski and his companion Hanka, and Jeanne Hébuterne, the mother of Modigliani’s child and one of the most important women in his life. When Modigliani died in 1920 from tubercular meningitis, Jeanne tragically committed suicide.